The greatest landgrab for the reason that Second World War. A dictator threatening using nuclear weapons.
The world’s most necessary establishment meant to ensure world safety, the UN Security Council, rendered impotent but once more with certainly one of its everlasting members doing precisely what it was set as much as stop.
The West’s response: a technique that has repeatedly failed to discourage Putin. Sanctions and diplomatic reprimands.
An alarming day, certain, but additionally surreal. Vladimir Putin introduced the annexation of territory he doesn’t totally management whereas his troops are in retreat throughout it.
Putin hosts Kremlin ceremony annexing elements of Ukraine – conflict newest
His speech was rambling and lengthy, the preoccupations of somebody who doesn’t get out sufficient. Conspiracy theories laced, it appeared, with the frustrations of a resentful outdated man. His viewers appeared bored and unconvinced.
In Red Square he advised crowds victory could be Russia‘s, whereas in Ukraine hundreds of Russian troops are being encircled within the coronary heart of that newly annexed territory by Ukrainian forces.
Putin is shedding on the bottom and shedding diplomatically, rebuked two weeks in the past by two key allies, China and India. But he’s not on the lookout for a option to save face and get out.
He is doubling down. He seems defiant, but additionally in denial and maybe more and more determined.
Outmanoeuvred in battle and remoted on the world stage, he’s working out of choices. And he’s shedding the Russian individuals, tons of of hundreds of them fleeing the motherland.
Putin is keen on telling the story of the rat he cornered as a toddler, not giving up however launching itself at him with renewed fury.
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Like the rat, he has launched his personal counter-offensive and raised the stakes, saying sham referendums and a brazen landgrab and indulging in harmful nuclear sabre-rattling.
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The annexed areas shall be defended by no matter it takes, he says. Publicly Western policymakers say his thinly veiled nuclear threats are a bluff. But can they make sure?
Putin has upped the ante, escalating a battle that’s turning into extra harmful for the world.
Source: information.sky.com”